Casualties

Summary

RISK! Podcast – Episode: Casualties

Date: January 22, 2026
Host: Kevin Allison

---

Episode Overview

In this emotionally charged episode titled “Casualties,” host Kevin Allison presents three deeply personal, raw, and intense stories of individuals who have faced devastating losses or survived harrowing ordeals. The storytellers reflect on brushes with madness, the pain of loss, and the incalculable aftermath of trauma, each wrestling with the burden and meaning of their experiences. The episode balances vulnerable storytelling with moments of dark humor, empathy, and the message that sharing our deepest truths is not only cathartic but essential.

---

Key Stories & Discussion Points

1. Scott Whitney – “Revelations”

[04:14–18:04]

Theme: Crisis of faith, responsibility, unintended consequences

• Setting: Scott, a lifelong Jehovah’s Witness, describes performing his ministry duties by knocking on the doors of a low-income housing project, secretly wrestling with his own wavering faith.
• Meeting Paul: He meets Paul, a man disfigured from a suicide attempt, suffering from mental illness and deep feelings of unworthiness.
• Central Experience: Scott continues return visits, sharing religious comfort despite internally doubting his beliefs. He becomes conflicted when Paul begins to withdraw and ultimately leaves a devastating voicemail, claiming Scott’s words have left him more hopeless.
• Emotional Impact: The experience leaves Scott shattered, feeling partly responsible for Paul’s worsening despair and crystallizing his own crisis of faith. The story closes with Scott’s decision to abandon both his ministry and his religious obligations.

Notable Quotes:

• “I have no doubt that God exists, and I’m equally sure that He has no interest in.”
  — Paul (as quoted by Scott), [06:29]
• “If this wasn’t truth, I’m as obligated to get out as I had been to stay.”
  — Scott Whitney, [07:45]
• “Everything you’ve been telling me… has left me more up than I have ever been. I feel so turned around and confused... please never, never stop here again.”
  — Paul’s voicemail (as recounted by Scott), [16:20]
• “That was the last time that I ever heard from Paul. That was the last time I ever went to anybody else’s door. And it was the last time I ever felt like I had any kind of responsibility to a God that I couldn't understand.”
  — Scott Whitney, [17:37]

---

2. Dan Telfer – Untitled (Protests & Personal Grief)

[18:43–33:55]

Theme: Grief, rage, self-doubt, and political disillusionment

• Backdrop: Dan shares his experience as a young man coping with his brother’s suicide, surviving in the shadow of September 11th, and enduring a period of personal and societal upheaval.
• Grief & Protest: Throwing himself compulsively into anti-war protests in Chicago, Dan finds no solace, instead developing compulsive coping mechanisms (OCD-like counting, cataloging people and objects).
• Panic & Escape: During a tense protest, Dan is overcome by panic and feelings of alienation, culminating in a public breakdown as he flees the police line while other protesters are arrested.
• Reflection: He grapples with feelings of impotence about "doing nothing," guilt over not being able to achieve meaningful change, and bitterness at those who seemed to suffer less or more insincerely.

Notable Quotes:

• “Now all you assholes get what it feels like. Now I should say I didn’t think that with my whole mind…”
  — Dan Telfer, [18:58]
• “What if I counted every street lamp I went, and what if I touched every newspaper vending machine I walked by?... That’d keep me from thinking about the infinite blackness at the corners of my vision.”
  — Dan Telfer, [22:30]
• “Surely they will look at me and feel pity and they will part just enough for me to get out. They didn’t, they didn’t move an inch. So I stopped just short hitting them and I started crying and I just sobbed and I just sort of shuffled back and forth.”
  — Dan Telfer, [32:25]
• “Everyone who got arrested, they didn’t get on the news. The news didn’t give a shit. In fact, they didn’t change anything.”
  — Dan Telfer, [33:25]

---

3. Janine Latus – “If I Am Missing or Dead”

[37:12–52:09; closing with song/poem]

Theme: Intimate partner violence, family tragedy, survivor’s guilt

• The Call: Janine recounts receiving a call from her sister about their youngest sister Amy’s disappearance.
• Dread & Search: Amy, previously vivacious and full of life, had grown distant since starting a new, unhealthy relationship. Family searches and hopes for a less grim outcome are dashed.
• Discovery: Amy is found murdered by her boyfriend. Janine describes the procedural and media circus, her family’s agony, and her drive to claim her sister’s body.
• Reflection: Janine expresses deep guilt—what she missed, what she failed to ask, how concealing her own pain prevented Amy from revealing her own danger. She details the abuser’s financial and emotional manipulation.
• Aftermath: The failures of justice, the communication from the abuser’s previous family, and the wish that more truth had been shared to prevent tragedy.

Notable Quotes:

• “Into the phone, I said, ‘He killed her.’ … I understood why we couldn’t think that yet, because if we thought it, maybe it would be true.”
  — Janine Latus, [37:56]
• “She was vulnerable, because in our culture, if you’re obese, you don’t think you have as many options as far as partners go. And only after she had lost this incredible amount of weight did she even think she deserved anybody.”
  — Janine Latus, [44:38]
• “And that’s what he used to tie her up in the painter’s tarp.”
  — Janine Latus, [45:59]
• “And Russ said, ‘Say goodbye, Amy.’ … and finally I just whispered it, I just said, goodbye, Amy.”
  — Janine Latus, [47:41]
• “But man, I wish we all had told you our stories.”
  — Janine Latus, [49:07]

---

Memorable Moments

• Scott’s Inner Battle ([07:45]): The duality of feeling tied to faith for the "answers" and being paralyzed by consequences of leaving.
• Dan’s Counting Game ([22:30]): A poignant, almost absurd description of obsessive behaviors as a buffer from grief.
• Janine’s Goodbye ([47:41]): The heartbreaking call where Janine, prodded by a friend, finally says goodbye to her murdered sister, capturing the brutal necessity of closure.

---

Key Segment Timestamps

• [04:14] – Scott Whitney begins “Revelations.”
• [11:29] – Scott describes his ongoing visits with Paul.
• [16:20] – Paul’s devastating voicemail.
• [18:43] – Dan Telfer recounts brother’s suicide and aftermath.
• [22:30] – Dan describes OCD coping tactics at protests.
• [32:25] – Dan’s panic attack and escape from police lines.
• [37:12] – Janine Latus starts “If I Am Missing or Dead.”
• [44:38] – Janine details Amy’s vulnerability.
• [47:41] – “Say goodbye, Amy.”
• [52:09] – Janine’s epilogue; reflection on sharing stories.

---

Overall Tone and Message

The episode is unflinching in its exploration of trauma, regret, and the complexity of survival. The storytellers speak with a frank vulnerability, blending pain, self-deprecating humor, and wisdom earned by surviving. Kevin Allison’s commentary underscores the podcast’s ethos: sharing our most difficult stories is a vital, healing risk. The episode ultimately serves as an invitation for listeners to open up, connect, and bear witness to the hardest truths—because silence can be even more dangerous than the telling.

---

Transcript

[Narrator/Host]

This time of year everyone talks about.

[Kevin Allison]

Going dry, but at Athletic Brewing Co. We're skipping that because we prefer going athletic, which isn't dry at all. From crisp goldens to hoppy IPAs and limited releases in between, you'll find something that fits your style. Every single non alcoholic brew is packed with flavor and the same craft experience you love. So yeah, you could call it dry, but there's really nothing dry about it. Find your new favorite near [e-mail] Athletic Brewing Company fit for all times.

[Narrator/Host]

Ah DSW Earth.

[Janine Laitus]

Place of the humble brag here. The shoes are so good no one would ever know how little you paid if you didn't go telling everyone that is. And with never ending options for every style, mood and occasion, all at really great prices, we'll definitely give you something to brag about.

[Scott Whitney]

So go ahead, stock up on fresh.

[Narrator/Host]

Sneakers from your favorite brands or try those boots you always secretly knew you could pull off.

[Janine Laitus]

Find the shoes that get you at.

[Narrator/Host]

Prices that get your budget at DSW stores [e-mail] Let us surprise you.

[Kevin Allison]

Hey folks, this is Risk, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. I'm Kevin Allison and every Thursday we release these special episodes where we look back at content from our earlier years. Keep in mind that some announcements in older episodes might be outdated, as well as even some of what's said in the stories. We always say that name of the series itself is a bit of a content warning this week, an episode that premiered in October of 2013. It is a loaded episode. The first story on this one was recently also featured in a Risk Revisited episode where I spoke with Scott Whitney about how he feels about his story called Revelations 11 years later. So now here is the episode we call Casualties.

[Narrator/Host]

Risk.

[Kevin Allison]

Hello kids, this is Risk, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. I'm Kevin Allison and this is Ghostly Dust Machine behind me now. We're calling this week's episode Casualties. People who made it through some pretty rough ordeals in today's episode, each one a bit of a brush with madness. We're always so honored that people share so generously their stories with us. Here you can share yours if you go to risk-show.com submission in just a bit we are going to hear from the brilliant Los Angeles based comedian Dan Telfer. He told a story at the Risk Live show at the Nerdmelt theater there in LA. But before that, start with a remarkable young man, Mr. Scott Whitney told this story in one of our [e-mail] I asked if he would come on over to my house and record it. So, without further ado, let's hear it. This is Scott Whitney with a story we call Revelations.

[Scott Whitney]

It's a Saturday morning, and I'm working in a housing project, knocking on doors. I'm in this hallway with brown industrial carpeting. The sounds of daytime TV are spilling out from the apartments along with the smell of cheap soap. And I turn to the door on my right. It's my turn to knock. I knock on this hollow core door, and I can hear the sound reverberate in the apartment. And as usual, I'm praying, metaphorically, that the person won't come to the door. The door opens up, and the first thing that I notice is that the apartment is pitch black.

[Narrator/Host]

Black.

[Scott Whitney]

And as my eyes adjust, I see the man that I would come to know as Paul. His face looked like he hadn't aged at all, and he had aged horribly at the same time. It was round and kindly and cherubic, but it was also pale and pockmarked and weathered. His hair was just a tangled mess, like he had had bedhead for a decade. And I noticed that his fingers wrapped around the door jamb were just stained yellow with nicotine stains. Then I noticed this tangle of burned flesh at his wrist, and it disappeared under the sleeve of his long john shirt. And then it reappeared right at the base of his throat, wrapped around the back of his neck, up across his head. Something horrible had happened to this man. And I was kind of brought back to the moment when he said in this really kind way, hi, what can I do for you this morning? And I launched into the presentation that I'd done a million times. Hi, my name is Scott. I know you weren't expecting me. I won't take up much of your time. And then I'd get into some kind of existential theme that I could sort of get behind. And I asked him, do you think it's reasonable to believe in the face of all the injustice that we see in the world today, that there is some kind of God that exists and is interested in us? And I really didn't have an answer to that question at this point, at least one that satisfied me. But fortunately, not too many people were interested in hearing my answer. So it worked out.

[Narrator/Host]

But Paul was.

[Scott Whitney]

He said, yeah, I have no doubt that God exists, and I'm equally sure that he has no interest in. I had been one of jehovah's Witnesses almost my entire life. And I had always really struggled with the structure, with the regimen of that lifestyle. I hated going to people's doors like this and telling them things they didn't want to hear when they didn't want to hear them. I hated having to explain to my co workers that I didn't celebrate Christmas because originally it was a holiday that honored the Roman God Saturnalia. When inside I'm thinking, who gives a shit? There's a lot of good reasons not to celebrate Christmas that isn't one. I just struggled with the whole structure of the lifestyle. But on the flip side, I totally bought the belief system. It made sense to me. It provided satisfying answers to a lot of the big questions. Whether or not God existed, and if so, what was my responsibility in the face of that? Why is the world so fucked up and is it going to get better? These all had satisfying answers. And fundamentally, it felt true. It felt like I had truth. And if I had truth, then suddenly I didn't have any choices to make. What I wanted didn't matter. That was irrelevant. All that mattered was truth. But when I hit 30, the old story started to break down and I could feel that I just didn't have the conviction that I once did. And I had this nagging doubt in the back of my head that if this wasn't truth, if this wasn't truth, I'm as obligated to get out as I had been to stay. But I also had to consider the implications, because if I walk away from this faith, I am entirely losing my community. Friends, family, literally will pass me on the street as though I'm a ghost. So I need to be pretty damn sure. There's really no taking a break either to sort this stuff out. If I stopped going to meetings or stopped going out in field service, that is knocking on people's doors, I'm going to hear about it out of concern. My friends are going to pay attention because they're concerned. And attention is the last thing that I wanted when I'm trying to sort this stuff out. So I decided to try to work it out under the radar and just go through the motions. And that meant continuing to go out in field service. Knocking on people's door on a Saturday morning is weird. Even if you're not experiencing a crisis of faith, you're there wearing a tie, you got a book bag and a Bible, trying not to feel like a salesman, and nobody wants you there. People would slam the door in my face pretty regularly. One guy Came to the door cleaning his gun in some kind of gesture. What you really wanted were return visits. That's when you had already called on somebody cold and they agreed to let you come back so you got a better chance of seeing somebody with a friendly face. They may not answer, but the other benefit is that you get to drive out to their place on a Saturday morning and eat up some time when you would normally be knocking on doors of people that don't want to talk to you. So RVs are the place to be. I remember when I was a kid, I had a friend, we couldn't have been older than 12. I had a friend that announced in a car group when we were out in field service that he had a return visit, this guy that he really had to get back and talk to. So because this is just more productive than everything else we could be doing, we drove the 45 minutes out to the return visit. And then we just start driving up and down these suburban streets because he can't remember the address. And we're just hunting for this house for almost an hour until he finally gets really excited and points and says, that's it. That's the house I totally remember. So we pull over and he and I jump out, we run up to the door, and just as he's about to knock on the door, he turns to me and admits, I have no idea who lives here. I'm totally faking this. So we just sort of pantomime knocking on the door for the sake of the people in the car and then run back. But, you know, it ate up two and a half hours. And if I'm honest, things really hadn't changed a lot for me at 30. In the face of this period of deep crisis of faith, I had encountered this man, Paul, that seemed really interested in what we had to say and what we were talking to people about. At the end of our chat, I asked him, as I always did, if it would be alright if we came back, if we set up a return visit. And now would be the time for Paul to say, no, I appreciate you stopping by. It was great talking to you, but I'm all set.

[Narrator/Host]

Thank you.

[Scott Whitney]

But Paul didn't say that. He said, yeah, that'd be great. Look forward to seeing you next week. So the next Saturday, I went back to Paul's and miraculously, he answered the door again. We picked up the conversation right where we left off. And it was in that conversation that Paul told me how he got those burns he had suffered from mental illness almost his Entire life. And when he was much younger, that manifested itself in this deep and real sense that he was evil. When he reached his late teens and early 20s, he started to hear this internal voice, and it identified as Christ. And that voice said to him, paul, you're beyond redemption. It would be better if you didn't exist. You are an enemy of mine. In his mid-20s, he. He really started to take on what that voice was saying. He said, one night I had just had it. I just felt like I was drowning in these voices and I decided to do something about it. So I climbed a utility pole by my house and I reached out and I grabbed a hold of the high tension wires, and the last thing that I remembered was just an explosion of white light. The next morning, Paul woke up in the emergency room. He'd survived, but of course now he was horrifically disfigured. And as he laid in that ER bed in the days after, the voice came back to him and it said, you survived, but don't think that anything has changed. You're still beyond redemption. And after he left the hospital, Paul became a recluse. And one Saturday morning, I knocked on his door. So as I kept going back to Paul's and we kept having these conversations, I was really wrestling with what to do because he seemed to really be enjoying the message that I was sharing with him. But it was a message that I really didn't value anymore. He seemed to derive hope and comfort from the thoughts that had sustained me for so long, but to me they just seem vapid and hollow now. And then I thought, who am I to impose my crisis of faith on this guy who seems to really be responding to it? My doubts are just a voice that I'm hearing. It really has no place in this conversation with this man. So instead I told him what I knew I could, what had worked for me for so long. He would tell me, scott, I'm telling you that I'm so confident that I'm doomed that I'm just waiting out my days. And I would tell him, that's really not what the Bible says. There's no such thing as I understood it between being damned for all time and saved for all time. Doesn't work like that. We're each free moral agents making decisions in the moment. And if you want to choose differently, if you come to understand that God expects something different of you than what you've been doing, you get to do it right now. The past is the past. And again, Paul, that just resonated for him. But each time I went back, as the weeks and months went on, Paul seemed to respond less and less to that message. As much as I tried to reinforce that his fate had not been written for him, he constantly had objections, whether it be the voice that he heard, his own feeling of self worth. And he started to pull back from our conversations to some extent, simultaneously. My doubts were not going away, and I stopped using the literature that we would use. I started just relying, and even this rarely, on some of the Bible verses that were kind of existential and had given me pause for reflect over the years. But even that was tough. It was tough to hear my own words. Things were falling apart. One Saturday morning, I went to Paul's apartment in field service, and I saw his car parked in the parking lot. When I went in the hallway, I heard his TV playing in his apartment. I knocked on his door and Paul didn't answer. I knocked again, and I could hear him moving around inside, but he didn't want to answer the door. So I went back the next Saturday morning. And the same thing happened the Saturday after that. I decided to give it one more try. So I went and met with the group that was going to be going out in field service before I went to go visit Paul. And when I walked into the building, a good friend of mine came up and she seemed really concerned. And she leaned in and whispered to me and said, there's a message for you on the machine that I think you should here. So I went into the back room and hit play. The answering machine started to play Paul's voice, and he said, this message is for Scott. This is Paul. Scott. Everything you've been telling me over almost the past year, the entire message that you've been sharing with me has left me more up than I have ever been. I feel so turned around and confused. I. I don't know which way is up. I feel despondent. I can only assume that that was your intention. And so congratulations, but please never, never stop here again. And I remember, as that message played out, feeling like my feet were just anchored in concrete. I was leaning forward towards the machine, and it just felt like I could lean forward and touch my nose to the ground without falling over. And I remember thinking, he's mentally ill. This isn't about what I was telling him. This is not about me. I hadn't caused him any harm. And then I wished that I could be so sure. And that was the last time that I ever heard from Paul. That was the last time I ever went to anybody else's door. And it was the last time that I ever felt like I had any kind of responsibility to a God that I couldn't understand.

[Janine Laitus]

We'll be right back. This episode is brought to you by Peloton Break through the busiest time of year with the brand new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus. Powered by Peloton iq. With real time guidance and endless ways to move, you can personalize your workouts and train with confidence, helping you reach your goals in less time. Let yourself run, lift, sculpt, push and go. Explore the new Peloton cross training Tread [e-mail] We're back.

[Narrator/Host]

The 4th of July 2001, my brother committed suicide. Suicide. He was on duty as a military police officer in Georgia. And then a few months later, September 11th happened. And I was like, yeah, now all you assholes get what it feels like. Now I should say I didn't think that with my whole mind. I didn't aggressively hate or look down on anyone when it came to that bit of schadenfreude. But I definitely had this sort of module in my brain that was hiding in the back. And anytime I saw someone suffering in a way that I felt was inauthentic, I thought, yeah, at least you have September 11th. That'll really make you hurt now. And it wasn't again, for anyone who had actually lost someone, anyone who had ever felt any genuine pain. But I lived in Chicago when September 11th happened. The city that has an inferiority complex about New York City that if you've never been there, you don't understand. But if you've been there for five minutes, Chicago lives and breathes. I wish we were New York. I mean, their biggest claim to fame is their pizza. Except instead of the basic part being good, the crust, it's just a bucket of fat that'll make you hate yourself more. So I grew up there and I lived there. And I was in my early 20s when September 11th happened. And I had just graduated from college and I just gotten a degree in acting. And I knew the second I started planning graduation that this degree was a huge mistake, that I was 6 foot 5, and that every time I auditioned for Shakespeare, I never got called back. What did I get? A lot of bridge trolls and children's plays, scary gay waiters and Christopher for Durang plays. Just big weird goofs that couldn't stand next to attractive people without looking like a mutant. So I was graduating knowing, at best I would be a character actor. Most likely, I would never use any of the sword fighting classes I took and I would just end up a loser. So I was in the middle of my summer school English class when I got the call that my brother had died. The summer school English class I was taking after graduation because even though I'd taken graduation, I was still missing one more credit, it turned out. So I hated everything about my life except for my girlfriend. And now my brother was dead. And I had a great girlfriend. She's my wife now. She's an amazingly supportive person. I was lucky too. I did have creative outlets. I had weird little storefront plays about politics and mythology, and I was pouring everything into it. But it wasn't enough. I had way too much despair inside me. So I was volunteering at Dealing with Death workshops at my old high school. It still wasn't enough because I still had a job at an independent bookstore at a tourist trap known as Navy Park Pier, where no one wanted to buy the Linda Berry book or the geek love that I was writing a recommendation for. They all wanted the new Left behind book or otherwise. They'd glare at me even though it wasn't out till next week. And there was nothing I could do to give them that Left behind book. I felt completely trapped. And so when the protests started against the various wars we were starting, I was the first one out the door. And at first my girlfriend completely understood, but she was concerned. And then she became more and more concerned because I wasn't explaining what I planned to do at these protests. I was just saying, I'm going. And then I would get really quiet and then I would walk out the door. So I was going to all of them. And I wasn't being proactive. I wasn't even being social. In fact, I was becoming less and less social. I knew my friends were going to these protests because, like me, they were all so far left wing that they hated everyone. But they were more engaging than I was. They were organizing, they were putting on makeup and they were building signs. I was doing none of that more and more as it went on, but it meant everything to me because I still didn't know how to cope with the despair inside me. So it sort of culminated in this big protest in Chicago. And I don't know if you heard this, but Chicago had a lot of protests. In fact, you may not have heard anything about this because the media did an amazingly terrible job of reporting it. There were thousands of people showing up. Downtown Chicago was choked with protesters. Literally, the traffic from 4pm to 9pm it just is non existent People were trapped in their cars like there had been a blizzard because we were everywhere. And the news were like, there's a couple hundred people outside a daily center. Maybe they're upset about something. They're probably going to cost the police a lot of money. It was really infuriating, and it made me feel worse every time I went. But I didn't know what else to do because I felt like maybe someone who worked at some military, I don't know, industrial complex would be on their way home from work and would decide to quit and become an actor. I don't know, something else. And of course it wouldn't happen, but I had to go. It had become compulsive. And in fact, I was starting to do things that psychologists would later tell me was sort of indicative of obsessive compulsive disorder. But I didn't know it yet. This was, you know, 10 years ago, and I've been lucky enough to see psychologists at this point. But at that point, early 20s, I had no idea what to do with myself except that everything I was doing wasn't working. Except, what if I counted all the colors of the cars I was walking by and kept a little spreadsheet in the back of my head? That'd be fun. That'd keep me from thinking about the infinite blackness at the corners of my vision. What if I counted all the green cars and all the black cars and all the red cars, and at the end of the night I could tell myself I counted the cars? Wouldn't that be fun? What if I did that with the street lamps, too? What if I counted every street lamp I went, and what if I touched every newspaper vending machine I walked by? That'd be good. What if also I looked at every person and I cataloged them? So at this one particular protest, where more people had shown up than ever before, I was counting everything I could lock my eyes on. Sure, there were cops with clubs. They weren't organized before, but, oh, today they were. They were blocking off every side street, directing us where to go. They used to just let us protest, and that was it. Someone somewhere got a permit and none of us got in trouble. But suddenly specific streets had dozens of cops with giant SWAT shields and bats, and they were standing there perfectly uniform like they were in a Marilyn Manson video. And we all just sort of kept chanting. Well, they chanted while I went, okay, that is the 17th person, who I'm pretty sure is a relative of a victim of September 11th. That is the 25th person that I'm pretty sure is a relative of somebody who's over in Iraq right now. That is the 33rd person who I'm pretty sure is a relative of somebody in Afghanistan right now. That is the 17th punk rock person. That is the third person who's insincere, but they probably mean it. That's the 33rd person who's like, insincere and really irritating. But they came here for the right reasons and they don't have a passive aggressive sign. So I'm not really judging them, but I've got to keep track. I was doing this with everybody as we walked up Lake Shore Drive and people were honking aggressively at us. This was supposed to be when they went home and the cops were guiding us down the highway. And it felt very strange to be in the middle of the highway. So I was counting the supportive honks, the negative honks, what I perceived them to be. I was lost completely in my head. The little part of my brain in the back that was full of despair. I was now letting give all the marching orders. I was letting it just keep track of the most mundane, boring facts about my surroundings so I could be in absolute denial of everything that was happening around me. And so I was getting upset, but I couldn't tell why. The counting should have made me feel better. It was great when I was a kid and I would just pull the pine needles off of every pine tree I walked by. That always was really comforting. But now, for some reason, touching the concrete curb where the person is screaming at me isn't doing the same thing. I don't get it. Is there wars going on and a dead brother or something? So finally the cops guide us off of the highway into this little part of the Gold coast of Chicago. I realized we were in the middle of an intersection, A few hundred of us, probably like 600 of us. And in front of us, the way was blocked by police with SWAT shield. And same to the left, same to the right. And then they sort of circled around and blocked us in from behind. That was interesting. We were completely surrounded by police with SWAT shields. I thought we were just happy protesters or something. And then everyone sat down and started chanting, which I guess is what you do when you are trying to tell the government that you like to sit in the middle of the street or that you will not get up even though you're supposed to get up. But I couldn't process it because I was stricken. I felt my body become just a wet noodle and my brain, like a little control center above, just saying, you know, danger, danger, this is wrong, you should not be here. And the wet noodle was just sort of flailing back and forth. I was the only person standing up. This big, gangly, six foot five failed actor. And I started looking back, I was just a cockroach. I was a rat just looking for an escape, just going. And everyone around me was completely ignoring me. They had their agenda completely in order. They were going to do something. They were willing to get in trouble for what they believed in. And I was not. All I could do was let the scared, frustrated, distracted denial part of my brain dictate everything. And I'm looking around at these people and suddenly the negativity is just flowing out into the rest of my brain. And I'm judging all those people. I've been sort of counting empathetic because again, I didn't hate any of these people. And the higher part of my brain understood the whole time, you're not really angry at anyone. You're not really like all that irrational fear and hatred, it's stupid, that's not real. But it was everywhere. It was leaking out. And the part of me that was sensible was like swatting, just this endless stream, trying to keep it from flowing out. And I looked at this one girl and she had brought a pet rat that was crawling around her shoulders as happy as could be. A girl just feeding it saltines or something. And I got so fucking mad at that girl for bringing a rat to the protest. How dare you. That is an innocent animal. You're going to prison. And that rat is going to prison too. And it's not the same for rats that it is for trust fund kids. Fake punk girl who I counted as number 32 of those. That rat is barely going to get acknowledged by the cop. And you're going to go, oh no, my rat is going to go, oh, okay. And he'll shove it into an evidence bag and at the last second he'll remember to poke holes in the evidence bag so he can breathe. But he doesn't care. He only did it because he remembered that you might be able to file a suit against him because you are a trust funder and you can afford a lawyer. So he pokes holes in it and he doesn't even treat it like a pet. He throws it in some locker with stacks of heroin and old clock radio that used to hold stacks of heroin and a bunch of other police evidence. And that rat's gonna slip into a coma and it's not gonna eat for three Days while you eat your bologna sandwich in prison. And you're gonna just sit there, forget about the rat completely. And when you get out, they'll throw its half lifeless body at you and you won't give a shit. And that's not fair because you did that to that rat. You fucking made the rat come here. That rat didn't wanna come here. When I told my brother that it was just as cool to play Dungeons and Dragons on the Internet, that it was in real life, he didn't believe me. He said that was pushing the nerd shit too far. I was like, it's totally cool. It's like with our friends, but you don't need to have friends around. He's like, no, but the whole point is it is a social thing and you get to talk to your friends. I'm like, well, what if you're too nervous to go talk to your friends? You can play it done strings on the Internet. And he was like, well, I'll leave the login on the family computer and maybe I'll play it when I'm back. Maybe, we'll see, I don't know, huh? Real fun. Enjoy it. And then he never fucking came back. So I realized we were all going to prison. And I did the only thing I could think to do, which was run directly at the police with SWAT shields. And at this point they were pretty tense themselves because there weren't just people sitting, there were people climbing the street lamps, waving anarchist flags and throwing bottles at the police. So it was probably not a good idea for the gangly wet noodle to run flailing at the SWAT shields. But I did, thinking, what am I but an out of control victim? Surely they will look at me and feel pity and they will part just enough for me to get out. They didn't, they didn't move an inch. So I stopped just short hitting them and I started crying and I just sobbed and I just sort of shuffled back and forth. And the only thing I could think to do, which is I very carefully making sure to not look aggressive at all, walked up as close as I could, tried to position my head between the swatch heels and I said, I can't breathe, I have a medical condition. Which was kind of true. I was having a panic attack, but I'd never really had one before, not like this. And they did part and they did let me go. So I didn't get arrested, bunch of my friends did. I didn't even know that I had friends at this particular protest, but I found out weeks later, some of my best friends had gone to prison, so they had done something. Everyone who got arrested, they didn't get on the news. The news didn't give a shit. In fact, they didn't change anything. The whole reason I got so upset is because I knew that protest meant nothing. It wouldn't change anyone's minds. It was. It was a bunch of preaching to the choir, making everyone angry, increasing tension. It didn't do anything. And I let that occupy myself. My friends didn't care. And now they have something that's permanent on their record, that they'll always be able to say they did. And I didn't do that. I ran away.

[Janine Laitus]

Sam.

[Narrator/Host]

We sing by the ring of the bell Is it hard to relax when you're told that you can never fail? Has the bit that you spit from your teeth been replaced by a taste that is all but lost is novelty. You don't need to change, you just need fire and a little faith. In order to get what you want done, you must fight for everyone. In order to get to what you need, you spend time on nothing much.

[Kevin Allison]

This is Risk. This is the leisure society behind me now. And we just heard from Dan Telfer. He told that at the Risk Live show at the Nerdmelt Theater in Los Angeles that happens every fourth Thursday. The next one is happening October 24, 2013. Eric Andre will be there that same night in New York City at the pit. October 24th, we will have Taylor Negron telling a story. So whenever you want to find out where Risk is appearing next live, go to risk-show.com tour. Now, our final story today is an especially loaded one. The remarkable author Janine Laitus. She has a New York Times bestseller called if I Am Missing or Dead. And Janine has done a lot of wonderful work speaking out about the issues raised in this story. I will just say there's just a bit of the story that we'll be sharing here, so I really do recommend that you check out the book. Anyway, here she is now. This is Janine Ladis with a story she calls if I Am Missing or Dead.

[Janine Laitus]

It was July 22nd of 2002, and I was driving down Interstate 70 in Missouri, which runs straight as a ruler all the way from Denver to way past St. Louis. And where I was trying to go was St. Louis, because more than anything, I needed to get to the airport. And I was buzzing past billboards and I was buzzing past cars, and in the cars there were these families, and in the families there was everybody there was there Were moms and dads and kids, and nobody was dead. I was ripping down the highway. I was going 85. I was going 90. I was going 95. And I just. I wanted a cop to pull me over so that I could get out and scream at the cop and somehow get this out of me. Because my mom called that morning. But the story doesn't start there. Two weeks earlier, I had been in a hotel room with a colleague, and we were just talking, and my cell phone rang, and it was my big sister. And she said, janine, have you heard from Amy? And right then I knew, and I started shaking my head, and I realized that I hadn't talked to Amy and that normally I talk to Amy all the time. Three times a week, four times a week, I'd call her and I'd go, you know the movie that was like a class reunion after the guy committed suicide? And there was a guy in that who sold tennis shoes. Who was that played by. And she goes, oh, that was Kevin Klein. I mean, she knew everything. When people at work were driving her crazy or when my kids were driving me crazy, she was the one I picked the phone up for. And I realized that it had been days since I had talked to my baby sister. And into the phone, I said, he killed her. And my friend starts shaking his head, and my sister's really quiet. And then she said, I know, but we can't think that yet. And I understood why we couldn't think that yet, because if we thought it, maybe it would be true. The reason we thought it, and it gives me goosebumps even to talk about it now, is that nine months earlier, my sister, who had been 37 years old going back to grad school, had just lost 85 pounds, had bought her own condo for the first time, had met this guy online, and she fell in love. And he was her cowboy. And in the pictures, he's wearing a cowboy hat and a big rodeo belt buckle, and he's got this big gold cross on a chain around his neck. She would tell me stories. He leaves me love notes, she said, and he makes my meals for me, and he uses my Weight Watcher rules. But he wasn't working. And so she was supporting both of them, and he was living in her home. But all this, you know, I knew this. I'd heard dribs and drabs and pieces of this, but at the time, I was really wrapped up with getting out of my own marriage. I had left my husband two months prior. And it was a marriage where, if I looked at another man. I'd be up all night with that finger jabbing me in the chest, insisting that I wanted this other man, that I was flirting with this other man. I would go to the grocery store and Little league practice and pretty much nowhere else. But I didn't tell Amy that. So now Amy's missing and we start making these phone calls and we call her friends. She's got a friend who's a Buddhist monk. And we call the monastery, we call everywhere. And then we start hoping that maybe she's just been in a horrible car accident, you know, and she just has amnesia or she's in a coma somewhere. And when you are hoping that, that's horrible. And then they found her. Co workers found a note in her desk drawer. And that note said, if I am missing or dead, pick up Ron Ball. And Ron Ball was her live in boyfriend. One of the sad things about that envelope is that it was dated 10 weeks earlier. So for 10 weeks she had been afraid. And for 10 weeks we talked about movies and the weather. And eight weeks before, I had left my husband and I am sure I monopolized our conversations. And that feeling of it's just like being the survivor of someone who succeeds at suicide. What did I miss? What didn't I ask? Was I too selfish? You know, why didn't she tell me? And you know, in my case, I kept thinking it's because I kept talking. And I also kept making my facade shiny, which didn't allow her to tell the truth. And so, you know, I didn't tell the truth. So she couldn't tell the truth. And then they found her car. And in her car were beer cans. But the fingerprints on the beer cans were all the boyfriends because my sister didn't drink beer. She said that she preferred to get her calories through chocolate. And there were newspapers with a recent date on them. But my sister didn't read the paper. So helicopters went up, search dogs went out. The big Cyclops TV cameras followed us everywhere we went. They were parked outside our hotels. We had two rooms. And the news was on in this room on one channel and that room on the other channel. And we would run back and forth trying to see if there's anything. My sister's employer let out a bunch of employees and they pasted flyers up all down the main street of the town, strobing in the side of your vision. It was, have you seen Amy? Have you seen Amy? Have you seen Amy? And I remember one day when my mom had to push open the door at the deli and push her own daughter's face taped to the glass, away so that she could just go in and order a sandwich. My mom and dad and the rest of us would get smuggled into the back of the sheriff's offices so that the media couldn't question us, so that they couldn't come to my mom and ask her questions. I remember us having this huge press conference and there were these collages of photos of Amy. And my mom looked into all those cameras, all of us standing beside her, and said, please help me find my baby. Eventually, though, we had to go home. I had a three year old at home. I had a house, I had a job. And we all went home. But those detectives are saints. They stuck on this case ridiculously long. They just kept going after this guy and kept going after him. He escaped to his family home in Tuscaloosa, which is out of district. And the detectives took time off work and away from their families so that they could just stake out the place. But the day I'm talking about, the day I'm telling you my story about, was July 22nd. And mom called and she said they found Amy. And I knew that they hadn't found my baby sister. They hadn't found the one with the stupid jokes and the huge laugh and the one who brought so many beads back from Mardi Gras that when we put them all on my daughter, you couldn't even see her face anymore. All they had found was her body wrapped in a painter's tarp and tied with speakers wire and buried at a construction site. On the 4th of July, 2002. I called my baby sister and I said, hey, what are you doing? And we talked about nothing. And she told me that she was baking bread for her sweetheart and he was going to be home later. And I asked her if they were going to to go to the fireworks. And she said, no, we'll make our own fireworks. And when we got off the phone, I said to her, I love you, Amy. And that's the last time I ever spoke to her. My baby's sister was strangled during the fireworks on the 4th of when Jane called and said Amy was missing, there was this gut feeling because suddenly it was like tumblers falling into place. The things Amy had told me, like, he has priors, but don't worry, they're just money things. He's never hurt anybody. When the sisters all got together and shared stories, it turns out that Amy had bought him a pickup truck after he had crashed his Own because he was driving drunk. She had bought him a utility trailer, sprayers, ladders, everything it would take to put him into business as a house painter. And when she died, she was a secretary. And when she died, she had $60,000 in debt for things for him. But she was vulnerable, because in our culture, if you're obese, you don't think you have as many options as far as partners go. And only after she had lost this incredible amount of weight did she even think she deserved anybody. And this guy was very, very, you know, this idea, let's set the alarm for a half an hour early so that we can lie in bed and cuddle before work. And the love notes. And she had bought him a big screen TV and then put speakers in the back for surround sound. But being my sister, she hadn't installed the cables, the speaker wire, so it was just lying across the baseboard. And that's what he used to tie her up in the painter's tarp. So I drove to the airport, screaming, Past FedEx trucks, past semis. I pick up my phone, I call my friend and I say, I am going to identify and claim my sister's body. And they take the call. And I'm crying and I call and I call and I call. I am going to identify and claim my sister's body. Finally, I called my friend Russ. And Russ said, say goodbye, Amy. And I said, no. He said, say goodbye, Amy. You're gonna have to say it. And you can say it with a friend or you can say it alone. So say goodbye, Amy. And I said, fuck you. And he said, no, you've gotta say it. And I drove for a while longer. And finally I just whispered it. I just whispered it. I just said, goodbye, Amy. And he said, say it again. Goodbye, Amy. And then I was just bawling and I could barely see. But I kept driving anyway. Years later, I wrote this book. And one of the people who contacted me was his daughter from his prior marriage. And she wrote, my daddy is a good man. He used to carry me on his shoulders. Yes, he has a drinking problem, but he never hurt my mom or me. He just left when I was little. About two days later, I got another email, and it was from the this girl's mother, Ron Ball's first wife. And she said, my daughter doesn't remember. But I picked her up and ran when she was a little girl. And if I had pressed charges, maybe your sister would be alive. All I could say to her was that, no, the way sentencing worked, he would have been out and no, she cannot carry that guilt. But man, I wish we had all told you our stories.

[Narrator/Host]

Sa.

[Janine Laitus]

But I guess it takes a while.

[Narrator/Host]

For someone to really disappear.

[Janine Laitus]

I remember where it was was when the word came about you.

[Scott Whitney]

It was a day much like today.

[Janine Laitus]

The sky was bright and white and.

[Narrator/Host]

Blue.

[Janine Laitus]

And I wonder where you are heart it is a F when you.

[Narrator/Host]

Die and I wonder if there was.

[Janine Laitus]

Some better way to say goodbye.

[Kevin Allison]

That about brings us to the end of this episode. This is Patty Griffin behind me now. And that of course was Janine Lattice. You can find her@janine lattice.com as you know, we believe very dearly in that sentiment that Janine was expressing the importance of sharing stories with the people you love, with the people you're just meeting and socializing with, with the people you work with in your career and in your creative outlets. That is why we created thestorystudio.org storytelling workshops of all kind in person or online, small groups or one on one workshops on storytelling for personal growth, storytelling for the stage, storytelling for business, and now even storytelling for dating. If you're in New York City and you're interested in that last one, Storytelling for Dating, write to me directly at kevinrisk-show.com we're gonna let you know when that happens. My one on one coaching sessions with people over Skype are one of the joys of my work day. And the workshops that we custom tailor for corporate entities for businesses are always a fantastic experience for all. So do check us [e-mail] Folks, today's the day. Take a risk.

[Janine Laitus]

Some Better Way to say goodbye Some better way to say goodbye.

[Narrator/Host]

Ram. Sa.